Friday, June 11, 2010

Aerosmith - Toys in the Attic(1975)

there's so much thought i want to put into dissecting this towering rock classic that beats the pitiful living shit out of appetite for destruction but it'd take a gigantic dedicated block of time that i'm not feeling up to. either way i can't emphasize enough how badly i want people to hear the first decade of aerosmith albums and get their heads out of their asses about some video game cash-in or rollercoaster or whatever. i know y'all love at least rocks which is fine but some intangible quality about this one does it for me the most. this is like the ugliest, brownest fucking album in the world, the coked out titty bar bender with a harvey milk album cover always looming in the horizon, and obv it defines this band perfectly. title track in particular is just this tidal wave of stale smoke and sewer sludge but the guitars and harmonies are still so sharp -just some dudes realizing they could stay the same hopeless hedonistic junkies of five years ago and take over the world with it. and unlike any of their other albums they manage to pull off that attitude back to front, through a seriously, kind of bizarrely creative and dynamic album given the knucklehead type dudes who put this thing together.

track by track rundown cause i got nothing else:

most of the cred for 'uncle salty' goes to whoever engineered this thing because there's no way these fucking slobs could have arranged a song like this. harmonies on the bridge are perfect, all the emoting in general is spot-on no matter how many countless takes there must have been

'adam's apple' is feminist rock with a great riff. this and 'big ten inch record,' they may be all about the loud fast dumb thing but it's safe to say no one who tried to pull this kind of shit off was as knowingly smart-ass or clever or self-aware. generally you think this is an ac/dc-caliber meathead band but of all the songs to make you change your mind somehow it's these two

sweet emotion/walk this way i don't listen to these anymore but obviously they're incredible. the 'sweet emotion' riff is my involuntary mental soundtrack to a lot of daily activities. also i like watching those vh1 hip hop countdowns where they insist that the aerosmith/run-DMC collab was one of the defining moments in american racial relations

i know half this post has been backhand compliments which is completely unfair to a band i love and a catalog i celebrate in its near-entirety so i'll go on record as saying 'no more no more' is at least one of the best rock songs of all time. i don't know why i go for this one over toys or uncle salty but it's like, point out one even slightly objectionable thing about this song. there are two billion examples of 'no more no mores' in this genre and this is no doubt the textbook flawless standard. it'd been floating in the aether since 'satisfaction.' they walk around strung out covered in blood in shitty clothes fucking countless anonymous women with death always lurking around the corner and they're so grateful for this perfect life, this american dream. this song is like walking on sunshine

'round and round' sounds like vanilla fudge i guess, it's good, sounds like it should be a get your wings b-side

'you see me cryin' is pretty catchy, producer kind of fucked it up with the overmixed strings but it's about as good as a song like this is gonna be. steve tyler is a great singer, no homo but dude is insane and this one is kind of his deserved diva moment

all in all i treasure this album dearly and would take it over let it bleed and beggars banquet all day, not to mention whatever other received wisdom bullshit you can come up with. the faces or whatever